Musicians to meet up for Highland Music Day

It’s a year since the inaugural Highland Music Day and this years event on Thursday 6 October will see 570 young people from all over Highland arrive in Inverness to participate in a day of workshops and group playing for musicians of all levels of ability who attend Highland primary or secondary schools.

Seven different venues throughout the city will be used to host activities for young musicians of strings, brass, woodwind, bagpipes and pipe band drumming, traditional music and percussion.

Guest tutors will include senior students of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, saxophonist Richard Ingham, brass educator and conductor Alan Fernie, samba percussionist Roddy Dickson of Sambayabamba , tutors from the College of Piping, traditional musicians Charlie McKerron and Gordon Gunn, and members of Scottish Opera Orchestra.

The Highland Council’s Music Development Officer Norman Bolton said:  “We are all really excited and looking forward to the Music Day which is an amalgamation and expansion of separate specialist days run in previous years.  It has taken a lot of organising as on the same day we will have participants for seven different musical genres playing in seven different venues around the city and the logistics of getting them to and from the event are complicated to say the least. 

“The Music Day activities will be a mixture of workshops and group activities and a big bonus will be the special guest tutors who are all experts in their field.  They will spend the day working with the students and no doubt provide lots of encouragement and advice.  I would like to thank all the Highland Instrumental Instructors and everyone involved in pulling together what I know will be a terrific day.”